Automation and enrollment states

An automation has a mode and a set of published versions. Each enrollment belongs to one version and holds one enrollment step per step in that version; each enrollment step holds one delivery per recipient. The tables below give every state and what moves it on.

Automation modes

The mode is the Status column in the Automations table and the button beside Publish in the editor.

Mode	Shown as	Trigger enrols people?	New enrollments start as	Notes
Automated	Automated	Yes	Pending: steps scheduled at once	The normal running state.
Verification	Verification	Yes	Paused: nothing sends until unpaused	Review in Activity > Needs Review.
Manual	Manual	No	Set per manual enrollment	The default for a new automation.
Inactive	Inactive	No	None	Existing enrollments complete. The mode button reads Use This.
Archived	Not listed	No	None	Set to Inactive, then hidden. Changing the mode restores it.

A never-published automation shows Draft on the mode button. The trigger is evaluated against the latest published version even for an automation in Manual or Inactive mode; the mode is what stops the enrollment being created.

Versions

Term	Meaning
Draft	The current editable trigger, audience and steps. Autosaved as you type; “Draft autosaved” confirms it.
Version	A published snapshot: “A published snapshot of an automation, capturing the steps that enrollments run against”. Publish creates one; Discard throws the draft away.
Published version	The newest version. Triggers and manual enrollments use it.
Update Enrollments	After publishing, the offer to move enrollments still running on the previous version. Adds new steps, rewrites unsent steps, removes deleted steps; sent, sending and errored steps are untouched.
Restore	Returns the editor to an earlier version’s content as a new draft.

Enrollment states

An enrollment is one employee’s run through one version. Activity > Enrollments lists them.

State	Meaning	Moves on when
Paused	Created by a Verification-mode automation or with Verify Mode on. Steps exist as drafts and nothing sends. Listed under Needs Review.	Verify then Unpause, which schedules the selected steps; or scheduling any step, which also unpauses.
Pending	Running. Steps are scheduled and send at their times.	Every step has finished.
Complete	“Every step of the enrollment has finished sending”. Also the end state after Stop.	Terminal.

Other facts recorded on an enrollment: its Reference Date, whether it was enrolled by the trigger or by hand, whether it is a test enrollment (excluded from counts and the Dashboard), its custom tokens from a mail merge, and the time it was stopped.

Stop (admin or owner, from the enrollment’s menu) cancels every delivery still in draft, paused or scheduled, including reminders and escalations, marks every unsent step complete and completes the enrollment. A delivery already sending finishes. Archive is offered for paused enrollments only; it stops the enrollment and hides it.

Enrollment step states

State	Meaning
Draft	Created but not scheduled. The state of every step in a paused enrollment.
Scheduled	Waiting for its send time. A step whose time has already passed is scheduled and sends on the next pass.
Sending	At least one delivery for the step is being sent. A step with recipients in several time zones is sending until the last one goes.
Complete	“All deliveries for the step have been sent”. Also the state of a step skipped as overdue or completed by Stop.
Error	“The step failed and will not be sent”, for example because its sender could not be attached.

A step set to Disabled in the editor is never created on an enrollment at all.

Delivery statuses

A delivery is one message to one recipient. The step pages in Activity show these labels.

Status	Meaning
Draft	Created, waiting for the enrollment to be unpaused.
Scheduled	Will send at its time.
Sending	In flight.
Delivered	Sent. For email, accepted by the recipient’s mail server; for Slack and Teams, posted.
Clicked	The recipient opened a link or button.
Actioned / Unactioned	Whether the recipient pressed the acknowledgement or completed the form.
Bounced	Email rejected by the receiving server. Resend from the delivery once the address is fixed.
Invalid	No deliverable recipient: no address, no channel, the calendar or Jira integration inactive, or the principal no longer in the lifecycle.
Skipped	Not sent, for example a step skipped as overdue or cancelled by Stop.

Change the mode of an automation to move between modes.
Publish an automation for versions and Update Enrollments.
Enrollments to see these states for real people.